Jack Sharry: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us for this edition of WealthTech on Deck. We’ve had the good fortune of having many different guests on our podcast from many different corners of the wealthtech world. We especially like to highlight the work of creative entrepreneurs. For this week’s podcast, I’m pleased to be having a conversation with Jason Early. Jason is the founder and CEO of RISR. RISR is a software company focused on deepening the relationships between business owners and financial advisors. I’ll let Jason fill you in a bit more as we get into it. Jason, welcome to WealthTech on Deck. Good to have you on board.

Jason Early: Jack. It’s awesome to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jack Sharry: Great. So let’s start with you describing RISR and why you started it. Fill us in.

Jason Early: Yeah, you did a nice job there in the intro, which is to say, you know, we’ve got this deep seated belief that owners of private companies need better advice, and that the advisors that serve them need better technology. And so everything that we do is about deepening relationships between advisors and owners of private companies. I’ve spent my entire career in financial services and in and around wealthtech for the last dozen or so years and we just saw, you know, an incredible opportunity as you think about the tidal wave of baby boomers that own businesses that are transitioning, coupled with the fact that private company ownership is more in vogue than ever today. You’re seeing this private company ownership surge, and they need advice. And so we saw this market opportunity where we believe deeply in the advisor part of advice, and enabling them to provide better advice to others, we thought was important. And so here we are.

Jack Sharry: That’s great. So let’s get into the business issues and opportunities you help your folks or your clients address and solve. Can you give us a high level case study, maybe, of what you do, who you do it for, and how that turned out for the advisor and their client?

Jason Early: Yeah. So RISR is an engagement platform, and so when you think about one of the chief challenges that advisors face when giving advice to owners of private companies, these owners have data that’s disparate and disorganized, and it’s all over the place. And so it becomes really challenging to provide quality advice if you know nothing about the asset. And so our platform brings clarity to that asset and shines a light which was previously dark, meaning without an understanding of the components of that asset, i.e. the hard financial data, coupled with what we call the soft data, the goals, hopes, dreams, and things like that. And that’s what advisors are best at, right? Advisors are great at pulling that out of their clients and their prospects, and so coupling those two things to have a better understanding of what the business looks like today, and, more importantly, what it needs to look like tomorrow to accomplish the owner’s goals and dreams and things like that. So our software is designed to launch advisors into better conversations with owners and deliver highly relevant insights to business owners about their business. So I say all that to say we license our technology to the financial services space, and we use advisors pretty broadly, so that might be anybody in the planning sphere, but be it at a wirehouse or be it at a RIA, at a planning firm, accounting firm, and so on, but they’ll license our technology and be able to seamlessly pull that data and then surface those insights to owners.

Jack Sharry: So describe that a little bit deeper, if you would. So you’re working with an advisor or advisory firm, they have an orientation toward business owners for all the right reasons. Just give me a sense, what does it look like? What is it that you’re pulling? Obviously, you’re collecting data in some fashion or means. What are you looking at? How does that play out? How does that manifest? And just take me through that.

Jason Early: Yeah, great question. So, so certainly the financial data. So we’ve got deep integrations into QuickBooks, w’re using OCR technology to pull data out of tax returns. Something exciting that you know we’re working on is really this universal document reader, which is, I want to upload a PnL or a balance sheet or scribble financials on a napkin, we’ll be able to read that. So we pull in all the financial data from whatever the document is that you upload and then we go through and look at specific company risks. So we’re asking qualitative questions about the business to better understand the business, and that includes things like the goals, hopes, dreams that we talked about. And so one thing that we often say is that context matters. So if I’m an owner of the business, and I’m sure you’ve heard this in your travels, right, owners will get a knock on the door that says, hey, I want to buy your business. And it might be 5, 10, 15, 20 million bucks, whatever the number is. And owners don’t know if that’s good or bad, right? The context really matters. And so 10 million for you might be very different than 10 million for that. And so understanding what your goals, hopes, and dreams are is critically important. And so we call that the dream value. And so pulling all that data, including those things, we’re able to surface relevant insights to the advisor and launch them into meaningful conversations.

Jack Sharry: So it’s sort of a deep listening on a business? You’re trying to understand, if you’re sitting in the advisor’s chair, you’re really trying to understand, not only the numbers, their balance sheet, their cash flow, their whatever, whatever their situation, their business is, and so forth, also you’re looking at the more qualitative stuff around risk, around I’m not sure if it’s market presence or what that all might be, but talk a little bit more about what is it that you’re looking for? And then what’s the output? In other words, what does that advisor have, and what do they do with it? I’ll let you fill us in from there.

Jason Early: Yeah. Couple things, right? We’re pulling in all that data. So as you mentioned, the financial data, the qualitative questions that look at the specific company risk, and then the advisor lands on a dashboard that gives them a real clean view of that business, which helps them understand where the business is today in terms of valuation, where they need to be, and we call that the dream value, how much income that produces, right, for the owner, based on their ownership and based on the value of the business, and then how long it’s going to take them to get to their dream value based on their expected growth rate. From there, we list out some top line best practices, growth opportunities, as well as key risks that the business faces. So a lot of owners instinctively might know some risks that they face, but when they stop and answer these qualitative questions and have a mirror held up in front of them, it’s important for them to understand how their business, what drives value in their business, so things like owner dependency or key people risk, or customer concentration, or vendor diversity risk. All of these things can either positively impact or negatively impact the value of the business. So it’s really important to understand. And then the output’s a report. So it’s a 15 page report that dives deep into the planning implications across all these things that we talked about.

Jack Sharry: I would imagine, for the kind of businesses you’re… sounds like you’re talking more smaller businesses in that, I don’t know, 5 to 20 million range. Meaningful businesses, but not the mega businesses and so like. And so essentially, what you’re doing is you’re probably providing information to the business through the advisor to the business owner that they may never have really seen before. Is that what you find?

Jason Early: I think you’re pulling on a really interesting thread. So it’s really all private companies, right? So any company that’s non public works in our system. That being said, your point is a good one, which is the impact is the greatest in the call it $1 to $50 million range, meaning that further you get up, up that scale, the more sophisticated you are as a business, as an owner, you’ve got more resources and so on. So we think that the impact is greatest. And you’re exactly right. They’re not getting this information elsewhere, and oftentimes, again, they don’t understand how all these things tie together. And so it becomes really difficult to make planning considerations or planning decision as an owner without knowing this information. And so that’s why there’s two criteria, if you will, that go into our report, which is to say, one, the owner has to care about it, but two, the advisor has to be confident and competent talking about it. So there’s all sorts of things that an owner might care about that an advisor doesn’t want to talk about… it doesn’t get a report. So it has to hit that intersection.

Jack Sharry: I would think, as an advisor, if I understand the person’s business better than they do, arguably, they know so much about their business, but they may not know about the value, the potential, all that sort of stuff. I would imagine it’s great opportunity for the advisor to really become a true trusted advisor in terms of on the business and ultimately on their lives.

Jason Early: Couldn’t agree more, right? Your lips to God’s ears, we talk about all the time empowering the owner’s most trusted advisor. So we, we’ve got this belief that if I’m a business and I own a business, the accountant typically starts as my de facto most trusted advisor. Because they know all the financials, but anytime a financial advisor gets involved, over time, the financial advisor kind of takes that seat. And so to that end, we want to enable that in our platform as well, which is to if you’re in the financial advice business, I can almost guarantee you’ve uttered the words, I’m the quarterback for all of your financial affairs. Oftentimes we find advisors fall short on that, and so it can be very difficult to pull all the advisors around the table. And so we want to enable that. Meaning, if you own a business and you’ve got an accountant, you’ve got an attorney, you’ve got all these trusted advisors, we want to be able to invite them into a shared experience in our platform, so that everybody can see that dashboard view of what’s going on in your business.

Jack Sharry: And I’m assuming this is an ongoing dashboard. In other words, once you have this day, that’s something that is reviewed quarterly, or…

Jason Early: Yeah, your business evolves daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual. Your customers change, your financials change, your risks change, all those things. So very certainly, it’s an ongoing thing.

Jack Sharry: So, you had given me a call. You had reached out probably about a year ago, and at that point you were a relatively new business. I thought it’s great idea. Let me know how it goes. We’re now back together again. Things seem to be working out well. Why don’t you talk a little bit about the momentum you have, some of the feedback you’re getting from advisors and clients in terms of the service that you’re providing. Fill us in on sort of that evolution of a business and how it’s going.

Jason Early: Yeah, I think one, we’re super lucky. We’ve got an incredible team going at this problem and with people that have been deeply ingrained in the wealthtech ecosystem for a long time. And so we say context matters. We mean both in the market, but also inside of our company. And so, one of the things that we’re most excited about is just watching the eyes light up. So every time we tell the story, people’s eyes are lighting up. And that’s not because our idea is so good. It’s because the financial services industry writ large is surrounding the business owner in a way that they never have before. So everybody inside of whether you’re at an insurance company, a wirehouse, a bank, an independent broker dealer, an RIA, whatever it might be, what everyone is realizing is that as these owners transition, a lot of liquidity is created. Everybody wants to get their hands and arms around that liquidity. But what everyone’s realizing is that if I’m not there providing advice prior, I’ve got no shot. And so today, there is an extreme focus on business owners, but there’s a real problem. There’s a lack of tools and technology, and there’s a lack of competence and confidence. So there’s this education gap as well. Advisors are fickle, right? If they don’t feel competent in talking about an issue, they just won’t. And so one of the things that we’re seeing happening in a tidal wave that we think that we’ll ride for a long time is this education flowing into the space. You’re starting to see companies invest in training and education on how to better serve business owners and how to have these conversations. So one, we think that’s super exciting. Two, we think it’s incredibly necessary. And then three, we want to be, you know, position ourselves as the go to platform to be there to launch the advisors into these conversations that they’re having. So we’re thrilled. We wake up most days, can’t believe it’s working, and excited about the future. And we’ve got one of our core values as a company is, you know, we call it a get to job, not a got to job. And we stole that from Ernie Johnson, who’s a TV announcer, but he gave a speech to the Alabama football team, where he talked about that, and that resonates deeply with us. So we’re super excited about the work that we do every day. Like I said earlier, believe deeply in advice and the advisor part of advice, and so enabling that is exciting for us.

Jack Sharry: So how did this come about? Where did you come up with this idea? I mean, it sounds spot on and it sounds like you don’t have a lot of competitive pressure at this point, and you’ve built out software that sounds pretty robust. So talk a little about where you are and how you got here.

Jason Early: Yeah. I love the Steve Jobs quote that says you can only connect the dots looking backwards, and that’s certainly true for this, which is to say, I started my career with a firm here in Philadelphia, roughly a $5 billion firm, hundreds of millions of dollars of insurance premium heavily focused on planning and exclusively focused on the business owner. And so for the first seven years of my career, I had a front row seat to giving advice to owners, not knowing where it would lead me, perhaps. But I wasn’t very good in the sea, if you will, as an advisor. And so over time, started solving different problems on behalf of advisors. I was a part of an… learning organization, where we licensed training and development content to financial services firms, and then spent the last seven years or so as CRO and then president of a leading wealthtech firm as well that was really a pioneer in the valuation space. And so as a result of kind of that mosaic of experiences, if you will, have just been watching the market get more and more focused on business owners. And one thing that we say is, for decades, advisors have had the tools and technology to serve the executive or the family or the household with planning technologies, but the business is largely… so we just, you know, we continued to see this gap and really just listened to the market, and that kind of guided the platform that we built.

Jack Sharry: So you’ve been through the toughest part, which is getting started. You’ve got the business up and running. Sounds like you have some…? Where does this all lead? Where do you see this going?

Jason Early: Yeah, you know, look, I think that, we think that there is a major convergence happening, which is, for the last 20 years or so, it has been kind of the comprehensive financial advice or financial planning at the core of kind of what people are doing. And so you saw insurance companies start to look like asset gathers, and asset gathers start to look like planning firms and those two worlds kind of collided. Another world is encroaching on that, and you’re starting to see all these wealth firms incorporate tax planning, and tax planning incorporate wealth. And so again, we’re just seeing this convergence of financial advice, and we believe that the best advisors leverage technology to do more of what they’re already great at. So you’re seeing these kind of niche planning areas pop up where advisors are able to incorporate more services into their overall value proposition without having to solve new problems. It just allows them to leverage technology to spend more time with clients and solve more problems for that client. One of the reasons that we think business owners are such a great market for advisors is business owners are complex, and they’ve got complex issues and challenges, and so there’s a lot of problems to solve. And so none of this answered your question, which is, where do we see this going and so we just see this really broad opportunity to be the platform that helps advisors and business owners kind of get on the same page, and so that’s pulling in data and surfacing relevant insights across a whole host of conversations. So capital structure, tax planning, risk management, key people, investments, valuation, on and on and on. We want to surround every conversation that the advisor is having with the business owner so that the owner can make more informed decisions and exit the way that they want to exit, meaning every owner exits their business someday, some way, and we want the advisors to be able to help the owner accomplish that.

Jack Sharry: So you’re not looking… this isn’t a mass market appeal. This is really, you’re looking for people that are focused on, specialize in business owners, right?

Jason Early: Yeah. We think that that market is growing, for sure, but totally. Right, if I’m an advisor, and I don’t work with business owners in any way, shape or form, you’ve got no use for RISR. So it is squarely focused on on the business as an asset.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, yeah. That seems to make sense. This is one of my least favorite terms, but, is overused around our industry, is hyper personalization. But essentially, what you’re talking about is hyper personalized on the business owner and the advisors that serve them. Is that fair to say?

Jason Early: Yeah, exactly right. And I, listening to one of your previous episodes, I heard a term that I hadn’t heard before, which was Peak 65 and all that was said it was 10,000 people turned 65 a day. I think that number’s grown to 12,000. And roughly 20% of those people own businesses. And so again, it’s a large swath of people that own businesses, and that’s growing. So again, as many of these transition, I mentioned earlier that it’s more in vogue than ever to own private companies. And so you’re seeing people come out of Harvard Business School that used to go to investment banking or consulting or the top tech firms, and they’re buying laundromats. And I say that to be a little cute, but it’s the reality. More people are trading in and out of businesses today than ever before, and so they need advice on the way in and on the way out.

Jack Sharry: Interesting. I… there’s a bagel… I live outside of Boston. There’s a chain of bagel stores run by a couple, I think they were Harvard Business School graduates. Before the pandemic, they moved to the Cape because they could run the business from the Cape where they preferred to be, certainly in the summer and they had 10 or 12 bagel stores or whatever. But you know, you would not expect the Harvard Business School couple to be running a bagel, but that’s a, I don’t know what the number is, but $10, $20 million business, and then gotta be smart about it, right? It’s like… interesting. And so when you work with advisors, do you… you have the software, that… talk about the software, and then I’m sure there’s probably some value add that goes with that. Talk a little bit about how you balance those, software aspect versus the the coaching. I imagine there’s some of that too.

Jason Early: Yeah, I think that’s right. So certainly it’s a software platform. So we white label this technology to, again, the financial services space. And so we license it at the individual level, meaning the advisor level, at the firm level. So you know, in the field, if you will, meaning an RIA or an agency or a firm, and then at the enterprise or institutional level as well. And so, depending on kind of where it sits, that’s how one would get access. And then, yeah, the training aspect is critically important. So again, I mentioned that that knowledge gap that exists, and more and more advisors are getting focused on this, but we do our best to help train the market on the conversations that one, they should be having with owners, or two, where they should go deeper. And so we stay really focused on the lens of financial advice. So there’s a lot of great software out there. And if you were to Google business engagement software, you’d find a whole host of great ones. But our opinion is that they all come at it from different lenses. We come at it strictly from the lens of financial advice. And so we’re trying to train our users or our advisors that are on our platform about the conversation specific to financial advice, and how the business, oftentimes their largest asset, impacts those things.

Jack Sharry: So this has been fascinating. You know, we talked a little bit before the podcast about what you’re doing. I think it’s super smart. And seems to me that the sky’s the limit as you’re just making good information, good software, good insights available at the advisors, got to… for those that are inclined, it’s got to be a godsend. So, and I’m sure that’s what you’re finding… not to put words in your mouth, but…

Jason Early: Yeah, yeah, look, I mean, we talk about creating raving fans, and the product certainly lends itself to that. So you’re totally right. It’s like water to those in the desert. So if I’m providing advice to business owners, I really don’t have a lot of tools and technology at my fingertips to enable me better. And again, the big thing there is context, but also the data capture. So being able to hold data in, analyze it, and then get relevant insights as an advisor is critically important. So we’re lucky with the customers that we have today, and feel incredibly great, you know, excited about the opportunity ahead.

Jack Sharry: Great. So, it’s been a great conversation. Really have enjoyed it, Jason, this has been fun. Any key takeaways you want to share with our audience as we look to press on?

Jason Early: Yeah, I would say a couple things. One, again, I think Larry Roth wrote about this the other day, which was the time for advice to business owners is now. And so we believe strongly that you can’t ignore the business owner any longer. So if you’re providing advice to… as a living, business owners are just too big of a part of the matrix to ignore anymore. And so if you believe that, without having clarity around that asset, so think about it, if you’re giving advice to anybody, you’ve got to understand not only the assets, but then the goals, hopes, and dreams. And so if you don’t have clarity around their most important asset, it’s impossible to give quality advice. And so again, we believe deeply in the advisor part, and all we want to do is launch them into better conversation. So the key takeaway is, again, our business owners are an incredible market that shouldn’t be ignored, and if you want to give quality advice, you got to have the tools and technology to enable that. So that’s why we’re so excited about doing what we’re doing. And we got a whole team of people getting out of bed every day thinking about this problem for advisors.

Jack Sharry: That’s great. So, one last question before we part, as we do with each of our podcasts, I know you’re a faithful listener, much appreciated on that. Always my favorite question, what do you do outside of work that you’re excited or passionate about that people might find interesting or surprising?

Jason Early: Oh, I don’t know that anyone will find it super interesting or surprising. I mean, I’ve got a four and a half year old daughter, and so my wife and I are pretty busy with her when I’m not focused on the business. But short of that, I love spending time on the… skiing. So be that on the water or in the mountains.

Jack Sharry: Oh, great.

Jason Early: You know, we spend a fair amount of amount of time, but we live in Philadelphia, so at the beach here in New Jersey, so anytime on the water is time well spent in our view.

Jack Sharry: Good. Even if it’s frozen?

Jason Early: Yeah.

Jack Sharry: That’s great. So thanks, Jason. This has been a lot of fun. Really enjoyed our conversation. Much continued success. Great to hear. I love, I love when someone comes up with a business idea that hasn’t been thought of and does some cool stuff with it. You really seem to be on your way to, I think, something that’s important for the industry.

Jason Early: Really enjoyed it. Thank you for what you do for the industry.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun. So for our audience, thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed our podcast, please rate, review, subscribe, and share what we do here at WealthTech on Deck, we’re available wherever get your podcasts. You should also check us out at our new, dedicated website, wealthtechondeck.com. All of our episodes are there, along with blogs and curated content from many folks around the industry. Jason, thanks again. It’s been a real, real pleasure.

Jason Early: Likewise. Thanks, Jack.

Jack Sharry: Appreciate it.